In the years since the Second Vatican Council, the table-ness of the altar has perhaps been emphasized above all other attributes. While an altar is indeed a table, it signifies much more than domestic furniture. The Order of the Dedication of an Altar calls the altar a “table of sacrifice and of the paschal banquet” (4). “Paschal banquet” refers back to the Last Supper, when Christ becomes the new Passover victim. The altar indicates, therefore, the fulfillment of the sacred meal of the Last Supper in service of the community, since “Christ made holy the table where the community would come to celebrate their Passover.”¹³ So the altar is a table of the Christian community, where the “Church’s children gather to give thanks to God and receive the body and blood of Christ”¹⁴ as the apostles did. But this table was precisely the place where Christ initiated the sacrifice of the Eucharist, hence the term “table of sacrifice.”

The altar not only shows the table of the Last Supper fulfilled but prefigures the table of the heavenly banquet, the eternal heavenly feast that celebrates the full reunification of God and creation. Sacrosanctum Concilium (S.C 8), makes it clear that “in the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem” and the Catechism notes that in the Eucharistic celebration “we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life” (CCC 1326). For this reason, the Church uses the fine arts to render this present in our own time and space, as (S.C 122) notes: “all things set apart for divine worship should be composed of signs and symbols of heavenly realities” An altar, then, gives a foretaste of the table of heaven because Christ is “the living altar in the heavenly Temple”¹⁶ 

It follows naturally that the altar is a place of festivity since it is the locus of the joyful work of salvation and a real anticipation of heavenly delight. Similarly, the rites of the Church are not so much performed as celebrated, and the altar is the place of that joyful celebration. When a new church is dedicated, the altar is covered with a white cloth, indicating that it is prepared for a sacrificial banquet and “adorned as for a feast.” The Order of the Dedication of a Church states that the dressing of the altar “clearly signifies that it is the Lord’s Table at which all God’s people joyously meet to be refreshed with divine food.”